Decision Time?

Green Space And Bike Lanes

Designs for "conservation" subdivisions in ACC's greenbelt and details of proposed bike lanes will be discussed and probably voted on at the October 7 Commission meeting.

Conservation subdivisions are designed to preserve within the subdivision open space which is jointly owned by everyone who owns a lot in the subdivision. Such an ordinance was passed in 2001 but allowed unbuildable space (such as along creeks) to be "preserved" which would have been preserved anyway. The new ordinance will eliminate this loophole, and could limit grading and clearing only to the immediate area where houses are to be built, rather than allowing larger areas to be cleared.

It would apply only in the Agricultural-Residential zone, the so-called "greenbelt." The proposed ordinance was crafted by ACC's planning commissioners and planning department staff. Still undecided is what the average density in AR-zone subdivisions should be.

The Planning Commission voted unanimously a few weeks ago to send the ordinance on to the ACC mayor and commission without a density recommendation. One house per five acres was discussed, as was one house for every 2.5 acres. Athens Grow Green Coalition is urging a standard of one house per 10 acres. In any case, the density standard will dictate only average density, and individual houses could be clustered onto smaller lots if at least half of the buildable open space is preserved.

The ordinance proposal requires extensive mapping (but not necessarily preservation) of natural and man-made features of the land - including large trees and "historically significant sites or structures." It would require ACC planning commissioners and staff to meet at the site with the developer and "designer." County commissioners and representatives of local land trusts would also be invited. For a follow-up conference, adjacent property owners would also be invited.

At their October meeting, the mayor and commission will also likely discuss design of bike lanes in connection with the planned re-striping of parts of Lumpkin St., Williams St., Alps Road and Oglethorpe Avenue, which could be done next year. At a recent work session, several commissioners had questions about the bike lane designs proposed by ACC's public works department. Mostly, the designs call for four-foot-wide bike lanes with occasional dashed lines to separate them from auto travel lanes.

Lumpkin St., presently four harrowingly narrow vehicle lanes, is expected to be reduced to three lanes of near-standard width, with four-foot bike lanes on both sides. How the bike lanes will be marked is still under discussion. Although County Manager Alan Reddish said there is no legal requirement "that we stripe any particular road any particular way," ACC Public Works Director David Clark has been reluctant to mark the bike lanes with a continuous white line, which is the usual standard for bike lanes, fearing a continuous line would imply the lanes are safer for bicyclists than they actually are. The national standard for bike lanes is five feet wide.

BikeAthens President Dorothy O'Niell says "the better the delineation of the lanes, the more it will be clear to motorists to respect the cyclists' space" and would like at least twice as much "paint on the road" as public works is proposing, which is one three-foot dashed line repeated every 25 feet.

At the recent commission work session, there was considerable discussion about the future of biking in ACC. Commissioners States McCarter and George Maxwell had both visited Ft. Collins, Colorado where they said many more people bicycle than in ACC.

"The best way to get around Ft. Collins is by bicycle," said Maxwell, although he said that city has "less sprawl" than Athens-Clarke County. "The problem is how to get these students out of their cars," Maxwell said.

Commissioner Kathy Hoard added, "the mentality of many is to hop in an SUV and go one mile," although she noted that UGA buses are often "packed." Mayor Heidi Davison said, "we'll never know if people will get on bikes, unless we give them the option" and noted that ACC's air quality recently reached a "severe" designation. Commissioner Carl Jordan said people use cars a great deal because government policies favor auto use. He suggested speed limits be lowered to 25 miles per hour. Commissioner Tom Chasteen asked whether it would be "totally out of the question" to make an off-road bike path along Lumpkin Street, merging it with one of the sidewalks.

According to Paul Quick of BikeAthens, one reason the existing Baxter Street bike lanes aren't used more is that students and parents don't think the three-foot-wide lanes are safe enough. Another is the steep Baxter Street hill, and the fact that bus service on Baxter is so good. He said various UGA departments have been receptive to BikeAthens initiatives. BikeAthens is helping UGA decide where to put more bike racks. Parking Services offers a book of coupons for occasional use of pay lots if students, faculty, or staff agree to use non-car transportation most of the time. Quick said he tried the system, bicycling most days and driving when he couldn't. He said it "worked out perfectly."

Quick thinks UGA's new Student Learning Center will change the way students travel, since it's not easily accessible by car. "That building is going to force people to find another way to get around," he said.

John Huie

John Huie wears socks and sandals and never watches TV.

Life And Limb

Woodman Spare That Tree

Bob Barker likes his toilet paper. He understands trees are resources in need of both conserving and using. So he'll bark at anyone who tries to call him a tree hugger. But he doesn't bite. As the new coordinator of the Community Tree Council (CTC), he'd prefer explaining to tree huggers and clear-cutters how to view trees as resources which require careful use in order to generate the most benefits.

"Nature will do things by default," Barker asserts, "but a good, sustainable community forest is created and protected by design." His job as coordinator was made possible through a generous grant from the Georgia Forestry Commission. His grant was evaluated and recommended by the Georgia Urban Forest Council. This funding allows Barker to continue mapping our Athens urban forest through satellite imagery to provide the ACC government the information for making better planning decisions. He keeps the data current to reveal any changes in the tree canopy - the amount of branch and leaf cover - throughout the Athens community. So when the CTC expresses alarm over what is happening to the canopy and, hence, to our urban forest, it is based on the current data Barker is able to generate for CTC to examine.

Currently, there is cause for alarm. Our forest canopy, which had once been increasing, has recently been on the decline. It is the rate of change which is particularly alarming. In the last three years the rate of loss of our urban forest has significantly increased.

On the maps, Barker points to huge white spots which have been deprived of trees. This is where Bob becomes dismayed. "Site preparation in this area means cutting right down to bare soil and violating the land's integrity. The flattening of hills and the changing of the flow of water throughout this area is doing irreparable harm to the land and to the environment. Riparian zones need to be much better protected, not interrupted and not disturbed. There are numerous recommendations for the CTC to make to the planning department and commission, and all of those recommendations can now be made based on sound information, which is what all planners need."

The CTC provides support to many other decision makers in this community as well. The CTC's other partners include: the North Oconee Greenway Commission, ACC Planning Department, ACC Leisure Services and UGA. Barker will continue in his new job capacity as program coordinator to supply information from the ongoing canopy study to these decision makers and to the public.

Barker's long-term hope and dream is to somehow turn this into a regional process, so surrounding counties such as Oconee, Barrow, Oglethorpe, Madison and Jackson can be part of this informational gathering to better understand how to protect their community forests too. As Kermit the Frog says, "It isn't easy being green." And as the entire area continues in its explosive pattern of growth, Bob Barker and the Community Tree Council face the challenge of how to promote the protection of the urban forest in order to keep our community green. Fortunately, this mapping information will help. Barker is working hard to get this information to the right people in charge of making long-term decisions for protecting the urban forest.

Liz Conroy

Liz Conroy is a local freelance writer.

SUVs Go To War

What Would Arnold Drive?

What kind of world would it be if someone set your car ablaze because it guzzled too much fuel? A better one, argues the Earth Liberation Front, a loosely-organized ecoterrorist organization that spray-painted environmentalist graffiti such as "gross polluter "and "fat, lazy Americans" on 30 sport utility vehicles at two car dealerships and set fire to a third on Aug. 22. Several SUVs and 20 Hummer H2s were destroyed.

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On Sept. 2, 22 more SUVs were trashed at a Houston car dealership. (Police have arrested a man in connection with the California incident.)

Ecoterrorism expert Bron Taylor of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, says that ELF believes "that ecosystems have an inherent worth that cannot be judged in relation to human needs, that human actions are bringing the earth toward mass extinctions, and that political action is insufficient to bring about the wholesale changes needed."

Taken at face value, most Americans agree with the "elves." A Los Angeles Times survey found that, even among conservative Republicans, two out of three people believe that the environment is more important than property rights, corporate profits or even creating jobs. Virtually everyone acknowledges that human-generated pollution is affecting the environment: only eight percent of Americans think that global warming is a myth. (The United States produces more greenhouse gases, both per capita and overall, than any other nation, making it largely responsible for climate change.)

The environmental crisis is, hands down, the most important matter facing humanity today. Who cares about peace in the Middle East if the region is under water, stricken by famine or choked by dust storms? Weather systems are becoming increasingly violent and unpredictable, species are going extinct and virgin-growth forests are vanishing at an alarming rate. While smog has diminished somewhat in places like Denver and Los Angeles, air pollution is getting worse nationally. Ohio's EPA, for example, announced that 2002 was the most toxic summer on record in 14 years.

The main reason: SUVs.

What should we do about this long-ignored crisis? Writing letters to the editor and joining The Sierra Club are admirable, but working within the system hasn't stopped the polluters.

Burning SUVs isn't the answer, argues the Sport Utility Vehicle Owners Association of America: "All told, the vandalism will not make any company think twice about producing more SUVs and other light trucks, nor will it shake the tremendous consumer confidence in the vehicles. Instead, the blaze destroyed the property of a small business owner, and put the lives of innocent civil servants in harm's way."

But SUVs are a national blight, burning 33 percent more gas, generating 30 percent more carbon monoxide and 75 percent more nitrogen oxide than regular cars. SUVs are so popular - they account for more than half of new car sales - that average fuel efficiency reversed a long-term trend by starting to drop beginning in 1987. Since 1990, SUVs have wasted an extra 70 billion gallons of gasoline, costing even more than the war on Iraq. They're the sole reason we dropped out of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases. SUVs have got to go.

The SUV phenomenon is the creation of an unholy alliance of Congress, Detroit automakers and consumers. The big four automakers have convinced even the legislators they don't own outright that eliminating SUVs would hurt the economy. SUV owners think the 9,000-pound leviathans make them safer than passenger cars (though studies have proven they're not), are better at handling snow (untrue), drive off-road (very few SUVs ever leave the pavement), offer extra room for big families (get a minivan instead, dope) and let them see ahead of smaller cars (while blocking the vehicles behind them). The Republican-controlled Congress has no intention of closing the fuel emissions loophole that lets SUVs pass as "light trucks." And the SUV craze is making Detroit more profitable than ever.

That leaves consumers and dealers as the principal targets of radical environmentalists like the ELF. The idea is to make SUVs as unfashionable, and as scary to own, as fur became after the PETA-inspired spray-paint attacks of the '80s. In an ideal world, American consumers could be convinced to do the right thing through an appeal to logic with public service messages like the "What Would Jesus Drive?" TV campaign, but the kind of people who would buy a car that increases the risk to other motorists in an accident can't be reasoned with. They're selfish and stupid. It's unfortunate that drivers must worry that their SUVs are being targeted by insulting stickers and Molotov cocktails, but one thing's for sure: it couldn't be happening to a more deserving group of people.

Ted Rall

Columnist and cartoonist Ted Rall is the author of the graphic travelogue To Afghanistan and Back.